Reg Park

The cultish world of bodybuilding has produced only one star, yet it might not have had Arnold Schwarzenegger had he never laid eyes on Reg Park, who has died aged 79. Park's imperious physique ignited Schwarzenegger's boundless ambition and ushered in a new age of muscle. "When he hit the lat spread," said Arnold, "it was like someone had closed the curtains." Park's subsequent film career as the rugged hero of five sword-and-sandal sagas offered Arnie further inspiration, and his family gave the future governor a model of what he wanted his own family to be.

Park's life, though, was more than just a paradigm for Schwarzenegger. He was born Roy Park in Leeds, the son of a gym proprietor whose first name he came to be known by, and, in his teens, was a precocious athlete. At 16, he ran the 100-yard dash in 10.3 seconds, recorded a long jump of 21ft 10in and was selected for Leeds United's reserve team. A wrenched knee changed the course of his life. In hospital he picked up a copy of Health and Strength magazine and saw a picture of Vic Nicolette becoming Mr New York City. "All at once I knew this was how I wanted to look."

Park worked as a physical education instructor in Singapore during national service, but made it back to London just in time to catch the 1948 Mr Universe contest. On the small stage before him were the two dominant physiques of the day, both American: the squat, dense bulk of John Grimek and the classical, free-flowing lines of Steve Reeves. Over the next decade, Park would build a body that combined their qualities.

He did so in conditions that would be anathema to modern strength athletes, struggling for nutrition in a country with ration books. Yet so rare were his genetics that he stacked on 20lb of muscle in a month and became Mr Britain in 1949. Reeves beat him to the 1950 Mr Universe title, but Reg broke the American monopoly the following year, and won again as a professional in 1958 and 1965.

A shade over 6ft tall, he packed 250lbs of beef on his frame. He could bench press 500lb and squat over 600; power was the bedrock of his physique. The deep, grainy muscle that glowed with hardness under the bright stage lights came only with shifting huge weight.

In America, Park won the approval of Joe Weider, the self-appointed "father of bodybuilding" and became a staple of Weider's many magazines. From their pages, the young Schwarzenegger clipped Reg's pictures for his bedroom wall, pictures that had his domineering father sneering: "Are you a queer?"

Schwarzenegger came to the UK to seek Park out, and the baby-faced giant caused a sensation at the 1966 Mr Universe, finishing second before an audience that included J Paul Getty and Jimmy Savile. He and Park met a few days later, and Arnold began to copy the fluid posing routines that Reg had developed with his wife Mareon, a former ballet dancer. Arnie even cribbed his dramatic stage music, from the film Exodus, and made it his own.

Schwarzenegger would become the first giant of the anabolic era, when nutrition combined with steroids to build progressively freakier physiques. By that time, Reg had made the five movies (1961-65) that suggested there was a market for muscle beyond the contest stage. All were Italian epics, four featured Hercules and in one, Hercules at the Centre of the Earth, 1961, he co-starred with Christopher Lee. Park also appeared, joshing with Schwarzenegger, in Pumping Iron, the 1977 documentary that gave the sport its fleeting glimpse of a golden era.

Reg and Mareon opened a chain of gyms in South Africa, where Reg was still training clients into his seventies. In February 2007, at the Arnold Classic, Schwarzenegger's own annual contest, he appeared on stage for the final time. Handed a lifetime achievement award by his protege, Reg's acceptance speech was a masterpiece of brevity: "This is not a talk show, it is a see show, so I'll let you get on with the show."

Arnold, as ever, was more loquacious: "I wouldn't be here today if this man hadn't inspired me the way he did."

Park leaves Mareon, his wife of 55 years, a son Jon Jon and daughter Jeunesse.

· Roy "Reg" Park, bodybuilder and actor, born June 7 1928; died November 22 2007